Two Vancouver teens among survivors of deadly Oregon bus crash

Emergency personnel respond to the scene of a multiple-fatality accident after a tour bus careened through a guardrail along an icy highway and fell several hundred feet down a steep embankment, authorities said, Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012 about 15 miles east of Pendleton, Ore. The charter bus carrying about 40 people lost control around 10:30 a.m. on the snow- and ice-covered lanes of Interstate 84, according to the Oregon State Police.

Photograph by: Tim Trainor
, AP Photo/East Oregonian

PENDLETON, Ore. — At least nine of the survivors of a bus crash that killed nine people on an icy Oregon road Sunday are Lower Mainland residents, authorities say.

In a statement Monday, Oregon State Police released the names of most of the 39 survivors, all of whom were injured to varying degrees when the Vancouver-bound charter tour bus rolled 30 metres down a steep embankment.

A 17-year-old Vancouver resident and his 16-year-old friend were among those who suffered broken bones. Speaking through a translator, the boy and his friend, who moved to Vancouver from South Korea two years ago, recounted details of the crash to The East Oregonian and The Oregonian newspapers.

The boys, who declined to give their names, said they were seated near the rear of the bus Sunday morning when it swerved a few times, hit a highway guardrail and flipped.

They also described breaking glass and seeing passengers pinned by their seats as the bus slid down a hill. Both said that they feared for their lives.

The East Oregonian reported that the teens, one of whom injured a knee and the other who suffered a broken collarbone, were staying at a hotel arranged by the Red Cross.

The bus was carrying 48 people from across the Pacific Northwest when it crashed in northeastern Oregon just after 10 a.m., a police spokesman said Monday.

Lieutenant Gregg Hastings of the Oregon State Police told a news conference that the bus, owned by a Vancouver company called Mi Joo Tour & Travel, was headed west in the left-hand lane, when it collided with a concrete barrier bordering the left-inside shoulder of the traffic lane.

The bus then veered across both westbound lanes, went through a guardrail and continued down an embankment for about 60 metres before it came to a rest.

"Many of the occupants were ejected or partially ejected from the bus," Hastings said. "There obviously were many people injured still inside the bus."

The National Transportation Safety Board said the 1998-model bus rolled at least once.

More than a dozen rescue workers descended the hill and used ropes to help retrieve people from the wreckage in freezing weather. The bus driver, a 54-year-old man from Vancouver, was among the survivors, but was injured and had not yet spoken to police.

Yoo Byung Woo, 25, told The Oregonian that he and other passengers thought the bus driver wasn't driving as slowly as he should have been for the conditions.

"I felt like he was going too fast," Yoo said. "I worried about the bus."

Yoo said it was snowing and foggy.

One of the riders, who was frightened, asked if they could take another route, Yoo told the newspaper. Some passengers were dozing when the driver slammed on the brakes.

Another passenger, who declined to give his name, told The Associated Press he was asleep when the bus went out of control.

"Suddenly people were screaming and the bus (went) down the hill," said the 22-year-old who has been studying English at a Vancouver university since November.

The man, who lives in Seoul, said he and five friends joined a nine-day bus tour of the western United States that included stops in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Las Vegas. All of his friends survived.

Jake Contor, a local resident who speaks Korean and helped translate for the Red Cross, said he's spoken with several crash survivors.

"The stories have been fairly consistent: braking, swerving, sliding on the ice, hitting the guardrail then sliding down the embankment," Contor said.

Contor said the victims told him that the bus left Boise, Idaho, on Sunday morning and was scheduled to arrive in Vancouver that night.

The passengers who spoke to Contor were seated at the back of the bus and he said it appeared that the front and centre of the coach sustained the most damage.

Following the accident, St. Anthony Hospital in Pendleton treated 26 people from the accident, said Larry Blanc, a spokesman for the hospital. Five of those treated at St. Anthony were transported to other facilities.

Blanc told The Oregonian the hospital brought in additional staff to handle the rush of patients and did a lot of X-ray imaging.

Blanc said Monday that 14 of those aboard remain at St. Anthony, one in serious condition, and that seven were discharged Sunday and are in the care of the Red Cross.

Blanc said 16 people were sent to other hospitals in the region, including the Oregon Health & Science University hospital in Portland.

RCMP Sgt. Peter Thiessen said Oregon police have asked the Mounties to help notify relatives of the crash victims in the Vancouver area.

One day after the crash, Hastings told a news conference that investigators are still trying to confirm the citizenship of the victims.

He said the vast majority were of South Korean background and lived in British Columbia, Washington state, Oregon and Idaho.

"We would like to express our heartfelt condolences and our hearts and prayers to the victims, their families and those in many communities in the United States, Canada, Korea, Taiwan and Japan," he said on Monday.

Emergency officials were called to the scene of the crash on Interstate 84 about 21 kilometres east of Pendleton, Ore., at 10:09 a.m. Sunday.

I-84 is a major east-west highway through Oregon that follows the Columbia River Gorge.

The area where the crash took place is so dangerous the state transportation department published specific warnings for truck drivers, advising it had "some of the most changeable and severe weather conditions in the Northwest" and can lead to slick conditions and poor visibility.

A bus safety website run by the U.S. Department of Transportation said Mi Joo Tour & Travel has six buses, none of which had been involved in any accidents in at least the past two years.

Hastings said by Monday that officials had not yet removed the bus from the bottom of the embankment, but once it's recovered, it will be taken to another location for a mechanical inspection and photographs.

The bus crash was the second fatal accident on the same highway in Oregon on Sunday. A 69-year-old man died in a rollover accident about 50 kilometres west of the area where the bus crashed.

A spokesman for the American Bus Association said buses carry more than 700 million passengers a year in the United States.

"The industry as a whole is a very safe industry," said Dan Ronan of the Washington, D.C.,-based group. "There are only a handful of accidents every year. Comparatively speaking, we're the safest form of surface transportation."

The bus crash comes more than two months after a chartered tour bus veered off a highway in northern Arizona, killing the driver and injuring dozens of passengers who were mostly tourists from Asia and Europe. Authorities say the driver in the October crash likely had a medical episode.

Emergency personnel respond to the scene of a multiple-fatality accident after a tour bus careened through a guardrail along an icy highway and fell several hundred feet down a steep embankment, authorities said, Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012 about 15 miles east of Pendleton, Ore. The charter bus carrying about 40 people lost control around 10:30 a.m. on the snow- and ice-covered lanes of Interstate 84, according to the Oregon State Police.

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